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Glossary of grammatical terms
Active and passive voice Sentences are either active or passive. In an active sentence, the
subject carries out the action of the verb, e.g. Un juge l’a mis en examen (A judge
investigated him). In the passive version of this example, what was the object of the
active sentence, l’ (him), becomes the subject of the passive verb, Il (he), and the
agent, juge (judge), appears after par : Il a été mis en examen par un juge (He was
investigated by a judge). Verbs which take a direct object (transitive verbs) can be
used in either an active or a passive way.
Adjective Adjectives are words used to describe nouns. In French, adjectives agree with
nouns in gender and number, e.g. dix bouteilles vertes (ten green bottles). Vertes is a
feminine plural adjective. Adjectives can either be attributive, i.e., stand next to the
noun as in dix bouteilles vertes or predicative, i.e., separated from the noun they
describe, e.g. Les bouteilles sont vertes (The bottles are green).
Adverb Adverbs give more information about a verb or another element in a sentence,
such as an adjective or another adverb. Adverbs can tell you how, when, where and
to what degree something happens or is, e.g. Elle travaille bien / tard / là / trop (She
works well / late / there / too much); Il est complètement fou (He’s quite mad).
Af rmative sentence An af rmative sentence is one in which we assert a fact or state
agreement to something, as opposed to a negative one in which we refuse, deny, or
contradict something.
Agreement Words change their form to ‘be in agreement with’ other words.
Verbs change according to whether the person speaking is ‘I’ , ‘you’, ‘s/he’, etc.: aller
(to go) becomes je vais (I go), tu vas (you go). il / elle va (he / she goes), etc.
Determiners agree with nouns in gender and number: e.g. ‘this’ can be translated by
three different forms according to the noun which follows: ce garçon (this boy), cet
homme (this man), cette femme (this woman).
Adjectives also agree with nouns in gender and number: e.g. the adjective blanc in its
masculine singular form is un vin blanc (a white wine) and in its feminine plural form
des chemises blanches (white shirts).
A past participle in a compound verb agrees with a preceding direct object: Ta
grand-mère ? Je l’ai vue hier. (Your grandmother? I saw her yesterday).
Antecedent In a relative clause the antecedent is the preceding element to which the
relative pronoun or adjective refers. In La lle que vous avez rencontrée hier est ma
cousine (The girl you met yesterday is my cousin), the noun la lle is the antecedent
and que the relative pronoun.
Article See De nite article, Inde nite article, Partitive article
Aspect ‘Aspect’ is a linguistic term which de nes actions in relation to time, as perceived
by the speaker. There is an opposition between those verb tenses that express actions
in terms of the ow of time and those which are ‘bounded’ by time, i.e., do not have
a sense of time passing. Je travaillais (I was working) describes the rst type, J’ai
travaillé (I worked) the second.